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p o i n t o f V i e w | By Martin Hunt Do these effects have anything in common? Well one thing they have in common is that they all cause the processes of the mind to become fixed for a time. It sort of works this way - when the mind perceives a work of art the art stimulates a thought which causes a fresh look which stimulates a new thought which causes a fresh look which . . . This is clearly a kind of feedback loop. A feedback loop tends to be self-perpetuating and a strong aesthetic feedback loop is hard for the mind to break out of. So, put briefly, work of art affects us by setting up a feedback loop in the mind. The better the art, the stronger the feedback loop that is created. Early modernist critics recognized the experience that the aesthetic loop stimulates - they called it the "aesthetic experience". This idea of how art influences people has a number of implications. For example, since the loop depends on the mind, and everyone's mind is unique, everyone has a unique appreciation of a work of art. A work may engage one person very strongly, and another person very little. At the same time, we find that there are works that almost everyone appreciates. This is not surprising, because though each mind is unique in detail, all minds are pretty similar in general. Modernism, as a movement in art, started over a hundred years ago. At that time, Europe was first being exposed to the art of the rest of the world due to its colonialist expansion. Europeans were amazed to find that this other art was very different from Art obviously affects people in many different ways. For instance, art may stimulate an emotion. Art can move us with beauty. Art can represent things that are not present like distant scenes or long passed loved ones. The capacity of art to move people is what makes art valuable. This value has a couple of aspects. Often, works of art are rare, and so their value makes them precious. This preciousness gives art a role in the very human games of status and display. On a higher level, art often can move people to shared experiences of awe and reverence. This capacity has often been used to help bind communities together. The fact that art can stimulate shared experience that transcends reality has been used for millennia to bind communities together. We see this every day in our churches and public buildings. September | October European art, yet was undeniably appreciable as art. This caused the Europeans some difficulties, because until that time it was assumed that artistic values involved things like: excellence at reproducing the appearance of the world, or narratives revealed through complex symbolism or beauty created by the special talents of the artist using rare and expensive materials. Yet, though Japanese prints were not accurately representational, or African masks were not conventionally beautiful - the Europeans couldn't deny that these objects were works of art. This of course had profound implications in that it showed that people all over the world are very much the same inside. This can be seen both as a cause and an effect of our Western political worldview, which is democratic and egalitarian. What a Weird Question! r many people, art is just a frivolous self-indulgence. Yet in our secular age other people see artists as modern day holy men - people with direct access to 'truth'. This is a bit of a leap of faith, and many people who can't make that leap instead come to the opposite conclusion; that art is worthless. Both ideas are missing the point. Art isn't about 'truth' - art is about experience.